The Story “Little Hero”: A Short Form in the “Estate Text” by F. M. Dostoevsky

Unlike other works by F. M. Dostoevsky of the 1840s, “The Little Hero” presents not only the Moscow estate experience (Darovoe and Fili) but also the St. Petersburg one (the landscape parks of Tsarskoye Selo, Peterhof, Pavlovsk...). The dacha experience, comprehended in the “St. Petersburg Chronicle” and “White Nights,” is brought in, and multiplied by acquaintance with Moscow merchant relatives. Thus, the estate-dacha topos in “The Little Hero” is not an autobiographical copy but an artistic generalization with an internal opposition of the estate and dacha segments with different value paradigms. For the first time, the article ontologizes the “estate topos” in Dostoyevsky’s works, which became a distinctive feature of his “estate text” in comparison with contemporary writers. Since the 1860s it has been realized in Christian-pagan coordinates. However, in the story of 1849, written in a prison cell of the Peter and Paul Fortress, the first achieved effect of ontologization is due to the romantic mood of the author and the choice of a small form — the genre of a literary fairy tale with its “eternal” meanings.